


Spilt on the Ground like Water

by tisfan



Series: Imagine Tony and Bucky 2016/2017 [32]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dubious Consent, Frottage, HYDRA Trash Party, Hydra trash party (past), Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired by Art, M/M, Medical Procedures, Not Clint Barton Friendly, Not Steve Friendly, Sort Of, Starvation, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, The Raft Prison (Marvel), Touch-Starved, Water Deprivation, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, not particularly steve friendly either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-09 23:58:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12286947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony has been black-bagged and illegally held at the Raft. Steve has no intentions of going to rescue him.But the Winter Soldier isn't going to leave him behind.





	Spilt on the Ground like Water

**Author's Note:**

> _Tony is arrested post-Ultron and is held in the Raft. Bucky gets captured too, and held in the cell next to Tony's. They support each other through Tony's "interrogations" and Bucky's impending execution, and slowly fall in love. So when Steve arrives in the middle of the night to rescue Bucky, there's no way he's leaving Tony behind._
> 
>  
> 
> Combined with
> 
>  
> 
> _Hello, you guys are the best, I LOVE this blog ❤ would it be possible to get some more protective Winter Soldier ? Like maybe Tony gets hurt (up to you as for how/why) and the WS comes right out and just turns into a big mother hen, fusses over him and everything ? (Btw it's obviously totally alright if this prompt doesn't get picked, I'll be happy to read anything you are willing to write and share ❤)_
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to MTO for their artwork. A few weeks back, MTO approached me with interest in doing a collab project. I tossed one of the above prompts at him, and I got an art piece back in a few days. The fic was written about half before I got the art and half after. So, the art does not match up exactly with the fic (for instance, Tony’s got his hair, and neither of them are in the prison outfits) but the sense of the fic; Bucky protectively over an unconscious Tony, trying to keep him from drowning and defending him… that carried through. 
> 
> This fic was originally posted to Imagine Tony and Bucky blog on tumblr as four chapters, but I'm presenting it here in full.

**Chapter One: Stark Men are Iron**

_Stark men are iron._

Tony Stark sat on the stone floor in his cell, wearing nothing but an orange prison jumpsuit. His hands were on the back of his neck. Absently he ran one over his head. They’d shaved his head when he arrived. The stubble was growing back in, but in another few days, they’d do it again. He supposed it wasn’t that bad; having no hair was probably better than having greasy, long, tangled hair that people could grab hold of.

He’d lost track of how long he’d been there, locked in this hole.

Oubliette. A place to throw people to forget about them,

Ross had figured it out. Wasn’t hard to do, really.

Blamed him for what Rogers had done; the break out at the Raft. Made Tony a scapegoat, if nothing else. And no one was going to come for Tony, were they?

Hell, it was possible that no one on the outside -- no one legit -- even knew he was gone. There were rumors that someone had finally cracked the Life Model Decoy problem. A well programmed LMD could distract and confuse for a while.  

There was no way to keep track of time; they fed him irregularly. Infrequently enough so that he was slowly watching himself starve to death. He’d probably lost at least ten kilos, just based on the fit of the jumpsuit they made him wear. And what food they did give him was pretty unsavoury, three of ten, would not order again.

He was dragged off to a shower every half dozen sleep cycles or so. Well past when he’d started to stink; he didn’t even notice his own body odor much anymore. He’d learned to take his jumpsuit off the moment he heard the Cleaners coming. Being marched naked through the halls and to the shower-facility was unpleasant, but less so than the alternative. If he was still dressed, they’d just throw him in the water anyway and it was fucking cold in his cell. Sitting around in wet clothes was really damned uncomfortable.

He saw no one else, except the Cleaners, and a few times when They -- whoever they were, really -- had questions. There were other prisoners; Tony heard them screaming sometimes. Occasionally, they heard him screaming. But none of them were close enough to communicate with.

Tony had been tortured before.

It didn’t get easier with practice.

There were questions. Sometimes they made sense. Sometimes he even answered them. It didn’t matter; he didn’t know any of the things they wanted to know. He had suspicions, but by the time Ross had him arrested -- black-bagged really, he’d been unpersoned with brutal efficiency -- Rogers had probably already moved.

Tony found himself hoping so. That Rogers had gotten away; that all the rogue Avengers were somewhere safe. He’d known, damnit, that Ross couldn’t be trusted, that what Ross was really after was control of powered persons. Tony knew he wasn’t immune from that, but he’d thought, he’d hoped, by playing the game, to buy them _time_.

His time was up.

Tony was going to die in that cell.

He tried to view the matter objectively; he’d always known death was the only outcome. It was a numbers game. Eventually, the house always won. Red, black, even, odds.

But Stark men were iron.

They were chipping away at his defenses, bit by bit. He wasn’t immune; even if his passcode was ridiculously long, they could try every combination. Eventually, he’d break.

 _Stark men were iron_. There was a deep core inside Tony that knew nothing about surrender. It only knew _survival_.

Eventually he would break. Or die. But he saw days, weeks, months of pain and fear and suffering before that happened. He knew he’d long for death and be denied before they were done with him. That pathetic, mortal flesh that would keep him tied here where he could do no good anymore, he could only hurt people he cared about. People he’d sworn to protect.

Perhaps, in the end, they’d turn him into a killing machine, like Barnes before him. Like Romanov. Like countless others.

He’d lost track of the days; there was no time in this place. He ate, he slept when he could. They came and they hurt him. That was all there was.

Tony wasn’t expecting it when the door opened.

It had only been two or three sleeps since his last “shower.” They wouldn’t be in a hurry for that, despite it being its own kind of torture. Cold water, harsh chemicals, the humiliation. Sometimes the guards would shock stick him, just for fun.

He blinked. Even with his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, the cell was dark. The guards were mere shadows against the corridor lights.

Someone was shoved into his cell; they stumbled forward a few steps, hit the wall. Yelled, turned, but the door was already sliding closed.

The sound when they hit the locked door wasn’t a fist striking, not flesh against metal, but _metal_ against metal.

It was loud, and Tony cringed away from it. Sparks flew, sending little flashes of light, like hostile fireflies. The door didn’t budge or bend or break. Given what Tony was starting to suspect, that was unexpected.

The shadow stopped, after a while, panting for breath. Then turned, took a few steps toward Tony. Yeah. One of these days, Tony was actually going to be wrong about something, and it was going to be a good day.

James Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, stepped closer. Close enough for Tony to see the glint of recognition in his eyes.

“I’m supposed to kill you.”

Yep.

***

_Six weeks earlier_

Coming out of cryo was nothing like waking up.

Pretty much the first thing he always did was puked. And not like a quick, simple, ate-too-much vomit, but retched until there was nothing left in his stomach, and continued to heave until his throat was raw from stomach acid. Until he was spitting blood and until his lungs ached and his diaphragm was strained.

Hibernation sickness would probably kill a man who wasn’t enhanced.

The horrified look on Steve’s face told Bucky that the Wakanda doctors hadn’t bothered (or hadn’t known) to explain. Or hadn’t done so in enough detail that Steve had believed them. Bucky didn’t care. What he did know was at least Steve was there. He patted Bucky’s back lightly, or kept one hand on the back of his neck, or murmured nonsense that was supposed to be reassuring.

By the time that was over, the tingled had started. Pins and needles didn’t even begin to cover it. More like dirks and daggers. Every muscle in his body seized up, cramped, twisted, _ached_. Bucky’d been through torture that wasn’t as imaginative and painful.

Finally, though, it was over.

“They figure it out?” That was the only reason Bucky had said they should wake him up.

“Stark did,” Steve admitted. “So he claims. Princess Shuri looked over his process. She okayed it.”

Because of course Steve needed someone else’s okay, these days. Not that Bucky blamed him; Stark had good reason to want Bucky dead, and getting him out of Wakanda under the guise of scrubbing the brainwashing would be the only thing that’d do it. And Stark and Steve… didn’t trust each other anymore.

Turned out not to matter; Stark’s quinjet -- along with Stark, and all his supposed brain-fixing equipment -- went missing. The whole fucking thing just vanished enroute.

There were rumors that Ross -- or someone above Ross, either legally or otherwise -- had been hoarding a team of enhanced persons. Either brainwashed, or controlled, or had loved ones in hostage situations. The possibility was raised by the rogues that Tony had been taken in revenge for Steve’s mass jailbreak. A scapegoat. Maybe to lure Steve into making a second attempt.

Woulda been a great plan, except Ross (theoretically, if it was Ross. It might not have been. But in any case, the only people who knew how badly the Avengers had broken themselves were in Wakanda and probably not talking to Ross.) didn’t realize that Steve…

“You ain’t even gonna look for him?”

“Buck, I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Steve protested. “No one knows where he went down -- if that’s what happened. Or who would have taken him.”

“So find out, punk,” Bucky protested. “You got a whole goddamn team here of spies and superheroes, here. Hell, you gotta fuckin’ witchqueen.”

“I am not going to ask the team to help find the man who locked them up in the first place,” Steve said.

It didn’t take much for Bucky to draw conclusions: Steve was still angry with Tony because of the Accords, because of the fight in Siberia, and all that boiled down to Tony had -- with every good reason in the world, and even Bucky wouldn’t deny that -- tried to kill Bucky. And Steve wouldn’t forgive him for that. Which meant, like every other Bad Thing that had happened over the last seventy years that Bucky had even been tangentially involved in, this was his fault.

He didn’t argue with Steve. There was no point and it was just going to be exhausting.

He found Romanov, however. Told her what he was planning. She’d back his play, and she did. She knew about red in the ledger.

Some things you just had to do, no matter the cost.

The cost was simple; he fell right into the trap meant for Steve.

***

Tony didn’t bother to try to run. Where would he even go? The cell was only ten by six, and a good two feet of that was taken up by his ridiculously tiny toilet and the seldom-functioning sink-tap. (All his drinking water came from there, and if he was lucky, they turned it on every ten hours and he had to be awake, and have his jug underneath it when it started or he’d lose his opportunity and be damned thirsty by the time it turned on again. That had happened a few times. When his urine got thick and orange, he started to become worried that they were going to let him die of thirst. No such luck with that, although it would have been excruciating, it would also have been quick.)

There wasn’t even a point to try to fight. In his suit, maybe, he was a match for Barnes. When he wasn’t weak from the bad food, erratic water, and frequent torture. When he’d not been forced into solitude for -- four weeks? Two months? He didn’t know -- and no room to stretch or exercise. Cold, all the time. He couldn’t fight.

Honestly, at this point, if Barnes wanted to strangle him to death, Tony wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just say thank you.

“Well, get on with it, then,” Tony said. He didn’t move; hadn’t even bothered to look at Barnes since realizing who it was.

“I don’t do that, anymore,” Barnes said. He all but flopped down on the cell floor next to Tony, close enough to touch if they both reached, and only not further away because there wasn’t that much room in the cell.

“Don’t kill people? There are some GSG9 guys whose families say otherwise.” Might as well get this over with. Tony was good, very good, at poking hornets’ nests, and while Barnes wasn’t the craziest fucker Tony had ever had to deal with, he shouldn’t be too hard to roust to some sort of mayhem. The question would be, could Tony possibly direct it?

“I--”

“Look, Red October, what the fuck do you think happens to a normal human, even one wearing combat armor, when they get hit in the face with a fucking cinder block?” Actually, that guy hadn’t died, and the doctors had been impressed with that, but he needed some massive corrective surgery and while he’d gotten his neck broken, there’d been no spinal damage. Tony wasn’t above lying.

And he was just a little bit petty.

Okay, maybe a _lot_ petty.

Like anyone was keeping score.

(Except him.)

So he wasn’t exactly surprised when Barnes shifted, and then pounced.

Tony kept telling himself that he wanted to die, to go ahead and get it over with, not to struggle--

And then realized two things.

He _couldn’t_ struggle; Barnes was strong, and Tony was used to fighting in the suit, which made the man’s strength even worse. Barnes had his wrists pinned in mere moments.

The second was that Barnes wasn’t hurting him. He had Tony pinned, helpless, legs spread and Barnes nestled in between them.

_Oh… oh, god, no._

“What are you _doing_?” Tony’s voice went up several registers. “Get off me!”

Tony had been through a lot of shitty, terrible, painful situations. Humiliated, tortured, betrayed, defeated… and he’d probably had sex with a lot of people who didn’t have his best interests in mind, but--

“ _Get off me_!” Panic flared. He bucked up, using the minimal leverage he had--

Tony couldn’t speak suddenly, because Barnes had his metal hand over Tony’s mouth, and then shoved two of those shiny fingers inside. Tony continued to struggle, shaking his head from side to side and pushing at those fingers with his tongue, trying to dislodge them.

“ _It’s all right_ ,” Barnes said, low in his ear. In Italian, which Tony’s brain stuttered over a few times, trying to translate and then he fell into it. “ _I’m not going to hurt you, but they need to think I_ will _. I don’t know how many cameras they have in here. I’m not going to do anything without your consent._ ”

Tony went limp for a moment, confused. Barnes pulled those fingers out, slick with Tony’s spit and wiped them gently over Tony’s cheek, leaving a wet trail. It was… weirdly seductive, kind of gross, and wholly unsettling. “ _Hate to break it to you, Gottlieb, but you’re already doing this without my consent_.”

“ _Go ahead and struggle, it’s okay, you can’t hurt me_ ,” Barnes said, and that was just insulting. And also, terrifying, because Barnes was right. Tony could struggle, a little, but Barnes was like a rock. The servos in the metal arm made noises, clicks and whirrs, as Barnes flexed, keeping Tony locked in position.

And oh god, Tony was going to be sick, because he literally _was_ like a rock. Barnes was sporting an erection against Tony’s thigh. Tony redoubled his efforts, writhing and twisting, but all that seemed to do was make Barnes toss his head back and roll his body against Tony’s.

“No,” Tony gritted between clenched teeth. “Don’t you--”

Barnes interrupted that with a kiss, mouth moving over Tony’s, muffling the sound, swallowing down Tony’s protests. Barnes continued to thrust against Tony’s leg, and Jesus, if it hadn’t been so weird, and Barnes didn’t hate him so much, Tony might have melted into the kiss. It’d been so long since anyone had touched him. Barnes licked his way into Tony’s mouth, and when Tony went to bite down on that invading tongue, the metal thumb ended up in his mouth at the hinge, keeping his teeth apart.

“ _Listen to me_ ,” Barnes whispered, mouthing down the side of Tony’s neck. “ _They want me to hurt you, they think we’ll save them the trouble. Leave us somewhere and they can spin any story they want. If they -- if they think I’m going to rape you, they’ll let it happen. So we need them to think that’s what’s happening. So we can stay together. I am here to rescue you._ ”

Barnes bit at Tony’s collarbone, and that was one of his weak spots. Despite his -- inspite of? Tony didn’t even know -- his revulsion, Tony arched up into that with a stuttered, shocked groan.

Tony couldn’t decide what it was; the sensual sounds of Barnes speaking Italian in Tony’s ear, the fact that nothing Barnes was doing actually hurt, and did, in fact, feel good to Tony’s touch starved and aching body, or that Tony was really just that fucked up. But he was starting to get hard and that was… that was… _shit, shit, shit_.

“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” Tony snarked.

Barnes didn’t even blink, but there was something about the way his mouth came down on Tony’s throat that implied a smile. So, Barnes was not as culturally deprived as Steve had been, maybe? “ _I have a plan. Two plans, actually, but you’re going to have to play along or neither of them is going to work._ ”

“ _And I’m just supposed to trust you?_ ” Tony was incredulous. But he must, at least a little, because he _was_ playing along, speaking Italian. He couldn’t seem to stop struggling. He was panting for breath; his muscles burned from the futility of trying to get Barnes _off of him_.

Barnes pressed his jaw against Tony’s and what he said was fucking sub-audible and how the hell did he do _that_? His voice travelled right through Tony’s skull, but couldn’t have possibly been heard by anyone else. “Come with me, if you want to live.” It was the best, and most fucked up, impersonation of the goddamn Terminator that Tony had ever heard. And he didn’t even hear it with his ears, it vibrated through his jaw and teeth and directly into the tiny, delicate cochlear nerve.

Barnes’ metal hand was roaming all over Tony’s body, and there… fuck, what-- “Goddamnit, _no_ ,” Tony burst out as the zipper of his prison coveralls went down. And when had Barnes stripped himself, because that was skin-on-skin and Tony was still pinned, helpless and--

“ _Go ahead and bite me_ ,” Barnes told him. “ _It’s okay, it’ll heal, but we need the blood_.”

Tony’s eyes widened, terrified and disgusted. “ _You cannot use blood as lube_ ,” he protested, horrified.

Barnes ducked his chin at that and Tony was revolted to see he was trying to hide a smile. “ _I’m not… oh, for fuck’s sake, just hurt me. They need to think we’re fighting._ ”

“I _am_ fighting,” Tony protested. Tony braced himself and bit down hard, because oh, god, if he really was going to get fucked by the Winter Soldier, he didn’t want to do it dry, but oh, Jesus, this was so…

Blood, coppery and brilliant, flooded his mouth, and Tony spat, and spat again; his stomach roiling and he was struggling, harder than he’d ever fought before, God, no, _he did not want-_ -

“ _Sorry_ ,” Barnes said, and then rocked against Tony’s thigh a few more times, grunted and--

“Sorry about-- oh, god, _gross_ ,” Tony hissed as Barnes shot his load over Tony’s stomach and leg.

* * *

 

**Chapter Two: Gaining Intel the Hard Way**

Bucky watched through half-lidded eyes as Stark blew half his water rations cleaning Bucky’s spill off himself. And then pressed himself into the corner furthest away, his coveralls zipped all the way up, arms wrapped around himself defensively.

Didn’t matter. Bucky could still smell himself on Stark and that was the important part.

Bucky did a sweep of the room. Subtle but thorough, scanning each brick and line and fixture for bugs. Whatever fucking group ran the Raft -- and Bucky was not stupid enough to think that it was actually the WSC or United Nations. He didn’t even think that asshole, Ross, knew what the fuck he was doing or who he was doing it for -- didn’t have Hydra Asset Containment on staff, or they wouldn’t have left him awake in this room.

The camera layout was good, Bucky had to admit. There were limited sight lines in the tiny room and most of them were covered by the six pinhole cameras. Two audio pickups and a speaker, as well. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe they hadn’t realized he was speaking, but he’d also discovered a long time ago that the servo movements of the arm put out a certain white-noise grade interference.

That said, he still needed more information. Steve had gotten the recon for the Raft’s top layers from Wilson and the others. But Steve had bullied his way in, and that was before the extra security went up. They’d been stupid enough to believe that Captain America wouldn’t organize a jailbreak; they’d also been stupid enough to not realize that King T’challa would help him.

They knew it now, and a second break-out was going to be a right trick to pull off. Especially since they’d moved the damn Raft, and Bucky had no idea where they were now. The planet was large, the Raft was a bare pinprick in the ocean.

Bucky calculated the angles. Yep, if he pulled Stark against the wall, two feet away from the door, and blocked with his back, they could talk there and no one could lip-read it. The bitchy part was going to be catching Stark and getting him there without hurting him; Bucky’d already got the man’s hackles up. Hurting Stark was counter to mission goals, but acceptable under certain circumstances.

He eyed Stark’s position. Up and over was going to be the best route. And if Stark’s reflexes were too slow, he was probably going to wind up with a broken nose and there just wasn’t shit Bucky could do about that.

 _Fuuck_.

Bucky gave himself a seven minute countdown, to collect himself and get his unruly emotions under control -- the only time he missed the Winter Soldier was when he had to act. It was easier to act when he couldn’t feel.

He lunged.

Grabbed Stark’s wrist and pulled; turn there, put his hand under the man’s hip for support, or he was going to end up with a dislocated shoulder from the weight of his own body. Twisted -- oh, good, that was easier. Stark had gotten an arm up to protect his face. Thank you. Turn again, rolled Stark over his thigh. Upright, step forward. Twisted, until one of Stark’s arms was pinned at the small of his back, face pressed against the wall. Captured his other arm and brought it down, locked metal fingers around both wrists like shackles and held him.

“Again?” Stark spat, breathless. “Jesus, your refractory--”

Bucky kicked Stark’s legs apart, thrust his thigh up into that vee and pushed Stark up until he was barely balanced on his toes and had to ride Bucky’s thigh just to remain standing. “Shut up.”

Bucky bent his head, tucked his mouth along Stark’s jaw. God, the smell of the man was driving him _crazy_ , but there was no reason for Stark to know that. Let him just think Bucky was crazy; that was true enough as far as it went. “ _I’m going out_ ,” he said, slipping back into Italian. It wasn’t the language choice that was important, he knew they’d get an interpreter if they didn’t have one already, but they needed to think that he thought he knew what he was doing. “ _Keep track of what they do while I’m gone. I’ll need a report. Now throw your head back as fast and hard as you can._ ”

“ _That’ll break your nose_ ,” Stark pointed out.

 _Kinda the point, dumbass_ , Bucky thought. He just waited until Stark made the connections, but if he didn’t move soon, Bucky was going to have a harder time controlling his instincts. He nudged. The hand that wasn’t pinning Stark’s arms wandered down the length of Stark’s body and he helped himself to a handful of ass, which got Stark moving.

Brilliant, shattering pain, for just a second. It didn’t matter, his nerves weren’t tied to any of his brain functions anymore. Hard to stun him, though just pain. He recognized pain, brain whirring into action to provide damage and functionality reports. Superficial wound, it would heal in less than twenty minutes, the bleeding would stop in three. He staggered backward, dragging Stark with him and then letting go. The man stumbled, hit the wall, whirled. Pressed as hard up against the cold brick as he could manage.

Bucky wiped his face, gathering up all the blood he could, then flicked his hand. Splatters of crimson dotted the walls and he got… cameras one, three, and four, and a glob of blood and snot on the speaker. Good job. His brain released a little bit of serotonin as a reward.

 _Shit_.

He didn’t want to freak Stark out any more than he had to, but… Bucky’s eyes dropped to Stark’s mouth, firm lip, chapped in places. And he was across the tiny room, grabbed Stark’s chin and tipped his head up.

Tasted blood in his mouth as he kissed Stark, hard and urgent. Tongue swept in and explored, sucking the air out of the man’s lungs and sampling it.

Stark’s hands came up, pushed against Bucky’s chest, but Bucky was immovable.

Bucky senses were enhanced. Highly trained. He felt it, against his skin, in his muscles, along his lip, when Stark stopped fighting the kiss.

And then Stark… opened to it? His hands stopped pushing, hand snaked around Bucky’s neck and fingers curled there.

The kiss changed from something forced, demanding, harsh, into lush softness. A sweetness that Bucky hadn’t felt in a long time. If he’d ever felt that way at all. He couldn’t remember. It slithered along his nerves and cuddled up at the base of his spine. Delicious and warming. It made him ache in his chest, made him want… _want_ , not need, not require. But just… _wanting_.  

“Oh, come on,” Stark said as Bucky pulled away. “I was just getting into it. Or does it not work out for you if you’re not forcing the issue?”

“Huh?” Bucky wasn’t sure he’d ever been so shocked in the last seventy years. He licked his own lips, tasting Stark all over them.

Stark stared up at him, amber-brown eyes glinting with some hidden fire. There was no fear on that handsome face. “You might fuck me, Barnes,” Stark said, “but I will be _damned_ if you rape me. So you want it? I’m willing.”

If there had been anything left of Bucky Barnes’s tattered and broken heart, he would have pulled it out at that instant and laid it at Stark’s feet.

One more kiss, for the sake of the sweetness. He’d need it; the next few hours were likely to be ugly and painful. He didn’t force it, didn’t push or pull or prod, just lowered his mouth, lined them up. And paused. Waited, breathlessly, to see what would happen.

Bucky didn’t know, _couldn’t know_ , what it was like to be kissed. Extreme Safety Protocols had been initiated a few times, with handlers that the Asset Team absolutely could not afford to lose through carelessness. But even the top level handlers had never kissed him, although they’d done everything else.

Maybe it was the pause. Or the way Bucky’s breath was suddenly hitching in his lungs. It could have been anything. A tremble through his spine, or the way his legs were suddenly weak. Whatever it was, Stark sensed it.

Stark took possession of Bucky’s mouth. Gently, stripping down his defenses like peeling an orange. Slow, drifting kisses that left tingles as he went. “Like this?” Stark asked, lips moving on Bucky’s, strange and sensual. Bucky made a soft, mewling cry in the back of his throat. Stark found the vulnerable place at the corner of his throat, licked at it. His teeth brushed Bucky’s skin until Bucky found himself whimpering with shivery delight. Bucky had never felt such an overwhelming need to _surrender_ to someone else. He let Stark in, his head lolling back to accept everything -- _anything_ \-- that Stark wanted to do.

When Stark finally let him go, Bucky felt like a cartoon character that’d been smacked upside the head with a mallet, with little hearts and birds flying around his head.

Stark narrowed his eyes, mouth twisting in a puzzled moue. Bucky wanted to lick that expression right off those pouting lips until Stark was sated and sleepy and--

_Mission._

Right. Bucky touched Stark’s cheek, a light brush of those metal fingers. _Back soon_. He mouthed the words, carefully, and in English, before turning away.

He’d gathered data on the door when they’d shoved him inside. Torqued the arm’s power up about forty percent. They didn’t need to know his full strength. Yanked back his elbow and slammed the metal fist into the door.

The noise was horrific.

Sparks flew from his knuckles on contact.

Boom.

 _Boom_.

The door caved, leaving a vaguely fist-shaped imprint behind.

Stark was staggering backward, pressed up against the far corner. He’d seen and knew the full strength of the arm. Hell, he’d probably helped develop the new one. Covered his head with his hands and crouched down.

_Boom!_

Footsteps in the corridor. Running. The low hum of a charging shock-stick. Click. Probably a sedative dart gun of some sort.

Bucky ripped the door off the hinges and went to work.

***

_Keep track of what they do._

Barnes had said it, and if there were things that Tony was good at, it was remembering. Well, as long as he knew it was important. There was already so much shit in his head that he’d learned, as he grew up, not to pay attention. There was unlimited data storage capacity in the human brain; there was not an unlimited amount of sanity. Selectively ignoring shit had probably saved Tony’s brain from meltdown -- given how fucked up he was as things stood.

Less than ten seconds after Barnes had crushed the door, Tony was on his face, hands zip-tied behind his back. Two of the guards had bypassed Barnes entirely to make sure that Tony wasn’t presenting a threat.

The melee raged in the corridor where Tony couldn’t see it, but eventually Barnes went down. Tony only knew that because they dragged him backward, face covered in blood, toward the stairs at the far end of the hall. He was limp, almost lifeless, but if he was dead, they probably wouldn’t still have a gun trained on him.

Tony snarked off, because it was him, and if he was quiet for too long, someone would assume something was on. Good thing his brain worked on autopilot sometimes. He was insulting and vile and belittling, but it was just generic asshattery.

After they’d dragged Barnes out of sight, they moved Tony to a different room; almost identical to the first one.

The brute-squad pushed Tony up into the corner. Took a few hits and jabs while his arms were pinned behind his back. It was astonishing how much it hurt; Tony was never, ever going to get used to being punched. There was something visceral and personal about it; being shot was less than fun, but didn’t feel quite so malicious. Like, the bullet didn’t have anything against Tony, he was just _in the way_. Fists, knives, close up torture, all those things were done by a person… one that didn’t care about Tony’s pain.

Another gut punch and Tony was retching, puking up the little bit of lunch he’d managed to swallow down.

He got a knee in the chest for that, and then they let him fall on the floor. He barely managed to roll to one side to avoid getting his face smashed in. Didn’t avoid the pool of vomit. Yay.

They left him that way, too. Arms cramping and stinging behind his back, face down on the floor.

On the plus side, zip ties were goddamn plastic and Tony had access to a pipe-tap. He abraded the shit out of his wrists before he got the right angle, but he managed to work himself free after about a half-hour.

Which was when the screaming started.

Tony had seen Yinsen threatened with a red-hot poker, watched as Pepper was tortured, seen the Scarlet Witch-queen unleash her demons on members of his team. Watched his mother strangled to death.

And he’d _never_ heard sounds like what the Winter Soldier was making.

Agonized screaming that went on, and on, and _on_. Fuck, didn’t the man have to breathe?

By the time Barnes stopped screaming, Tony was pressed as far back in the corner as he could get, arms curled around his head and whimpering, as if he could stop Barnes’ pain just by not hearing it, could he fucking not hear it anymore, jesus christ, stop stop _stop…_

When they threw Barnes back in the cell, he wasn’t moving. Barely breathing. The arm hung limp and the fingers were curled. Lifeless.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony swore. He was on his feet in seconds, but his hands went up as a bank of guns were pointed in his direction. He barely waited for the door to close behind them before Tony was on his knees, trying to asses the damage. He tugged the zipper down for the jumpsuit.

Bruises that were fading even as Tony watched; across Barnes’ chest  and his forearm. From struggling against restraints. Tony grimaced. There was a lot of blood and a number of shallow cuts along his bicep and chest. A deeper one in his gut and the blood there was sticking to his jumpsuit. _Fuck_ , Tony didn’t even have any water to try to clean the wounds.

He did the best he could with what he had, which was his own jumpsuit; tearing the top half into strips and using them to bind up the less drastic wounds. Folded up a section of the back into a pad and prepped some more strips. Pressed the pad against the wound in Barnes’ stomach and held the pressure. Barnes moaned, pitiful, and his breath hitched again.

“Don’t move, Sergeant,” Tony said. “This is bad enough without your help.”

Blue eyes shot silver with agony flickered open. Barnes opened his mouth to say something.

“Nope, not listening right now,” Tony said. The water trickled out of the pipe. “Fuck, hold this in place. Fucking _press down_ , damn it!” He left Barnes long enough to snatch up the plastic water jug and let the day’s rations pour into it. He’d missed at least forty seconds of it and fuck, it was not going to be enough for two people and injuries.

Tony allowed himself two swallows and his throat burned for more. He wasn’t usually the lifejacket first kinda guy, but in this case, if he let himself die, Barnes was also going to die, and that just didn’t seem fucking fair to anyone involved.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Tony said. He pulled the pad away from Barnes’ wound and splashed half a cup, maybe, of their precious store of water over it.

Barnes heaved; threw his head back and clenched his jaw, a pained grunt squeezing out between his teeth. After a moment, he managed to open his eyes again. “Wha’d I do this time?”

“Fucked if I know why,” Tony answered. He rinsed out the pad with another bit of water, pinkish run off dripping onto the floor. “You knew they’d do this.”

“Needed intel,” Barnes said. “I’ll heal.”

“You’re crazy,” Tony said. He shuddered. Didn’t want to see another fellow prisoner die when Tony couldn’t do anything. He pressed the damp pad against the wound and leaned on it. _Close, damnit, close._ He wrapped the strips around it, tied them as tight as he could. He leaned down. “Tell me you got something.”

“I did,” Barnes said. He coughed, groaned about coughing. “Gonna need your help, though.”

“Some rescue mission,” Tony fussed. He checked the pad; it was hard to tell if it was bleeding through or not.

“Couldn’t.” Barnes reached for him, blood-stained fingers touched Tony’s wrist.

“Couldn’t what? Be smart?”

“Couldn’t leave you here,” Barnes said. He strained, tried to sit, and Tony pushed him back down, starfishing one hand over his chest.

“Stop that,” Tony said. “Rest. The rest of the day is going to suck enough without you dying on me.”

Barnes gave him a wobbling smile, like the sun breaking out behind the clouds, then rolled his eyes back and passed out. There was a tightness in Tony’s chest that didn’t make any sense.

Tony tried to move away, lean against the wall. It wasn’t much more comfortable than the floor, really, but-- didn’t matter. Barnes had a hold of Tony’s hand and wasn’t giving any signs of letting it go. On closer observation, he was shivering. Fuck.

With a sigh, Tony maneuvered himself around until he was on Barnes’ uninjured side and curled up there, sharing as much body heat as he had. Not as much as would have made things comfortable, but some was better than nothing. And if he found himself pressed up against Barnes’ skin, cuddling with him like some oversized stuffed animal, no one had to know. Right?

Right.

* * *

 

**Chapter Three:  Twelve Percent of a Plan**

There was a hot spot against Bucky’s side when he woke, heavy and breathing softly. Bucky shifted just enough to look. Not because he needed to, he could smell Stark’s distinct fragrance from across a crowded room by this point, but he wanted to look.

The man was asleep, face lax and peaceful. Smudged with dirt and blood. Tracks of clean skin running just under his cheeks; lips were chapped and cracked in places. Stark had a few days worth of stubble on his chin and scalp. He barely looked anything like the man that Bucky had fought in Siberia, scarcely resembled the publicity and magazine shots Bucky had seen.

“You gonna do something other than stare?” Stark asked. He hadn’t moved, his eyelids hadn’t even flickered. His heart rate was constant.

“Makin’ plans, doll.”

“Any part of those plans involve sharing them with me?”

Bucky did a quick scan of the room; allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction. He’d thought the pinhole cameras expensive to maintain and delicate. His little adventures had gotten them a new cell, but they hadn’t had time to install advanced monitoring.

“Can you fix th’ arm?”

“Depends what they did to it, how tight your screws are, and whether or not my fingernails are up for the task,” Stark said. He opened his eyes, sat up. “Light would be good, too.”

“Yeah, since we’re wishin’ for pie in th’ sky, might as well have ice cream, too,” Bucky retorted. The sarcasm was automatic, but it just so happened that Bucky might have a little surprise.

“If you tell me you have a multitool stashed somewhere in your thumb, I’ll stop bitching, but until then, sunshine, you’re just stuck with what I can--”

He broke off suddenly as Bucky twisted the thumb on the metal hand and yanked, pulling the phalange off.

“Jesus, warn a guy!” Stark made a rough, gagging sound.

“Princess Shuri put this in, just in case. There are a few other surprises,” Bucky said. “And they’re not on the original plans, so no one thought to look.”

He dumped out the tiny kit from the hidden compartment and then snapped the thumb back on.

“I take back at least half of the rude things I’ve thought about you in the last hour.”

“You were asleep for most of th’ last hour,” Bucky felt compelled to say.

“I think really fast,” Stark snapped, roughly picking through the kit, his fingers nimble and graceful. “And you’re a serious asshole.”

“So, what I’m hearin’ here is you’re takin’ back, like three whole bad thoughts, an’ probably not even th’ one where you just called me an asshole.”

“Something like that, yes,” Stark said. “You got a point?” He was already opening the maintenance panels. “What’d they do?”

“Plugged in to stimulate th’ somatosensory cortex,” Bucky said. He made a waving gesture over his injuries. “These ain’t… well, not nothin’, but not serious. Surface wounds. But, when they get tapped in--”

Stark winced. “Yeah, I don’t need more details than that.” Stark was a genius, even if biology wasn’t his speciality. He didn’t need Bucky to tell him that they could cause him nociceptive pain just by amplifying the receptors on his dorsal horn and flooding the spinal gates. The whole arm was wired through his spine. Hell, they didn’t even have to cut skin, but they did it anyway because they were sadistic bastards. They could poke him with a pencil and it would be like shearing his arm right off.

Even just pain (as if there were such a thing as just, when talking about pain) could kill a person, given enough time. The heart, lungs, nervous system, lymphatic system, would all start to fail. But Bucky had the serum, which meant his pain tolerance was higher. A lot higher. Catastrophically high.

“Looks like they disconnected your power leads,” Stark muttered, already wrist deep in Bucky’s shoulder. “Hang on, let me clear the receptors before I give you movement back.”

There was no feeling inside the arm at the moment, for which Bucky could only be grateful, as Stark yanked and prodded and poked, swore and muttered. But when Stark’s hands touched his skin, they were gentle. It took Bucky a while to realize that Stark didn’t need to touch his skin, he was doing it whenever Bucky flinched or made a sound or even squeezed his eyes shut as Stark worked. He was doing it as comfort.

“All right,” Stark said, after some time, “I’m going to turn you back on, Johnny Number Five.”

Power restored to the arm with a sizzle. Systems check initiated; the vents fluttered. Fingers curled and stretched, wrist twisted. Elbow flexed. “Good job, Stark.”

“I think we can dispense with the formalities,” Stark said. “You can call me Tony.”

Huh. Okay. “Sure. Tony,” Bucky offered his hand, pulling at the makeshift bandages Tony had set up before they’d slept. “Bucky.”

There wasn’t much pain, anymore. He could probably ignore it, as long as he stopped bleeding. Blood loss was one of the things that could kill him. His body just didn’t produce blood much faster than a baseline human. But he’d be healed up soon. The question was, would he heal up in time?

“Bucky,” Tony said. “Yeah, you know I’m probably not going to call you that.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “I tend to answer to the Asset as well.”

That got him a full body flinch and a shudder. “Right. Right. Bucky, then.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said. He flexed the arm again, testing it for responsiveness, bringing up the internal diagnostics. All green. Great. “I need some more sleep. Wake me up for food, water, or if they try to take you anywhere.”

“Where are they gonna take me?” Tony wondered.

Bucky gave him a thin-lipped smile. “It’s your turn to be hurt.”

“Yeah, okay, so _I’m_ not sleeping again, Aurora.”

“Great,” Bucky said. He curled up on the floor again and used Tony’s thigh as a pillow. “This is more comfortable anyway.”

“So happy to be of service,” Tony said dryly.

“Tryin’ t’ sleep here.”

***

There was nothing like waking up warm and well rested; and this was nothing like waking up warm and well rested.

Tony hadn’t meant to fall asleep on watch, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? There wasn’t any entertainment; the guards never walked by their cell to do a patrol, so he couldn’t even try to calculate time, or the length of the corridor.

Tony’d never been so bored in his entire life, really.

He was also hungry, which was pretty annoying. His stomach had given up growling at him quite some time ago. For some span of time the growling had pushed all the way up into snarling, but now it just occasionally muttered to itself, like growing was too much work and it was sad and depressed.

Great. He was so bored that he was anthropomorphizing his own _internal organs_.

He had counted Bucky’s breaths for a while, pondering the feral affection and deliberate insanity that made up Bucky Barnes. There were times when Tony sometimes wondered if he was the only actual human on the entire planet and everyone else was some sort of shape-changing alien, and this was all a giant skinner box designed to test Tony’s reaction to stress. It wasn’t even an uncommon coping mechanism, his therapist had told him, but he’d never felt the idea quite so strongly as when trying to puzzle out the mystery that was sleeping in his lap.

Somewhere in there, the soft sound of Bucky breathing, the warmth against his thigh, the wah Bucky kept shifting in his sleep, pulling himself closer to Tony, all these things sang a lullaby and Tony fell asleep.

The scrape of plastic against the floor woke him and he was nudging his companion as he scrambled to his feet to recover whatever slop they were going to have to share.

“Tony, wait--”

Bucky’s metal hand closed over Tony’s wrist, hard enough to bruise the skin there.

“ _Zhelaniye_ ,” a voice spoke outside the door, harsh, commanding.

Bucky froze, except for a tremor that Tony wouldn’t have felt, except for Bucky’s hand on his wrist. “What… no…”

Another word; Tony missed it in the horrified scream that came out of Bucky’s throat. He went to his knees, clutching at his head. Tony was dragged along with him, because not once did Bucky’s vice grip loosen.

“Hey, what the hell--”

Tony jerked his hand back, felt the metal tearing skin. Bucky howled, an animal in pain, and threw himself at the door.

Whatever he’d done previously that took him several blows to crack out of the cell, that was nothing comparied to the whirlwind of strength and brutality that struck the cell’s door.

The metal shrieked and twisted, tearing off its hinges under that power.

The voice outside spoke faster, a rattle of Russian that Tony didn’t have a prayer of understanding. Bucky raced into the hallway, a madman, all thought, deliberation, gone from his face.

No one rushed the cell. Tony scowled, then chased after Bucky; he had no idea what the fuck was going on and maybe that was for the best.

The voice spoke another word and Bucky stopped, dead. He was breathing hard, sweat beading on his forehead. His mouth, which had been drawn up in a snarl of rage, went slack, then straightened into a neutral mask.

“Gotovy soblyudat',” Bucky said, and Tony watched as his will drained out of his face.

Tony shuddered; he’d seen that before. The Winter Soldier programming. That Tony was supposed to remove, before the quinjet and his BARF tech had been stolen, him along with it.

“Good morning, soldier,” the man said. Tony didn’t hesitate.

He was weak, he was starving, he’d been tortured, but he was still a fighter. Tony didn’t know anything about surrender.

He lunged for the man; hands outstretched.

Perhaps the handler hadn’t thought that Tony was a threat. Too absorbed in taking control of Bucky to care. Tony got his hands around the man’s throat in an instant, thumbs digging at the windpipe.

The man shoved him off, slamming Tony against the wall. “Kill him.”

Bucky reached out, liberated the gun from the hander’s belt. Checked the weapon. His finger went to the trigger. Bucky turned, very slowly. Murderbot. Yeah, Tony was so, so fucking dead.

“Cannot comply.”

And shot the handler in the face six times. Kept pulling the trigger once the clip was empty as if the man couldn’t possibly ever be dead enough.

“The _fuck_?”

“Protection protocols, priority one override,” the Winter Soldier said. “Priority target threatened. Override.”

Tony blinked. “Me?”

“Protocols engaged,” the Winter Soldier confirmed. “Mission?”

“Get us the fuck out of here,” Tony decided. It wasn’t his fault he had a rogue Winter Soldier on his hands, but he might as well take advantage of it, right? Right.

“Stay behind me, sir,” the Winter Soldier said. He dropped to one knee next to the guard, scavenging weapons and armor.

At first Tony’s plan was just Get Out. That was a good plan, simple, easy. He could be happy and proud to be part of that plan.

There were alarms, of course, and Tony had to get the Winter Soldier to stand still so he could climb up and disable some of the cameras. It wouldn’t keep the guards from figuring out where they were in general, but specifics were going to be out of reach, your service has been interrupted, please press five to reach an operator and fuck off.

Except that it was Tony, and Tony was pathologically incapable of sticking to the goddamn plan. It was like… a compulsion or something.

And in the middle of the Winter Soldier causing more mayhem than a 75% off wine sale, they happened to walk right by Command & Control.

“Hold up, snowflake,” Tony said, not entire sure if the Winter Soldier could be reached through the power of suggestion, but he turned without a sound and followed Tony into the fishbowl. There were a few techs there, key word with the Winter Soldier backing Tony’s play was… were. They fled or they were tossed like broken dolls. Tony tried not to look too closely.

“Go grab me one of those techs, would you, buttercup,” Tony said, absently, tapping at C&C’s control panel. “Alive, and with all their fingers, please.”

Using the tech’s thumb print got Tony past the first tier of security, checking the guy’s ID badge and driver’s license (what did they need a driver’s license out in the middle of the goddamn ocean?) got him past the second layer. Really, people needed to stop using their birthdays as pin codes, didn’t they know that everyone already knew that? Although, if he stopped and thought about it for a moment, Tony supposed he’d have to be grateful for stupidity, since it was making it easier for him to gain control of the system.

“Okay, okay, let’s see. Doors, unlocked. I don’t know who else is in here, but enemy of my enemy and all that,” Tony said. And there was an intercom system; so why the hell not? He activated it. “Attention, attention, prisoners of the Raft, this is Tony Stark, and I advise you to leave your cells and head topside as soon as you can. For those Heil Hydra assholes, or whoever’s actually running this place, you can find me if you rub two brain cells together. Don’t rub too hard, though. You’ll go blind.”

And everything was pretty much great, up ‘til that point; prisoners escaping, security in disarray, no exit plan yet, but what the fuck did you want? He couldn’t do everything; and if they got out of the water, he might be able to call a suit to him. Something. He was just poking around in the Raft’s propulsion system -- he didn’t want to drive the fucker, he wanted to sink it -- when everything went to shit.

Tony forgot.

Fanatics were fanatical.

The tech that the Winter Soldier had shoved under a desk after getting passwords and fingerprints from him managed to pull something out from under his shirt.

A something that exploded.

In a flash of green-white light. In a burst of heat so intense that Tony worried that his skin might actually be melting off.

Exploded.

* * *

 

**Chapter Four: Not Without Him**

If there was one thing that could be counted upon in the entire fucking universe, it was that Captain goddamn America couldn’t arrive anywhere except _in the nick of time_. Like. what the hell, Stevie. Did the guy have a doomsday fucking watch or something and he couldn’t show up before things were absolutely critical? It was written into his goddamn contract or something?

Also, he apparently had something against being stealthy -- Natasha could not have taught him any better? -- which might usually get an eyeroll, except that in this particular instance, Bucky needed him to be loud and obnoxious.

“Down here, pal!” Bucky shifted his grip. One arm under Tony’s arms, keeping his head above water, the other pushed against the wall to keep himself upright.

“Come on!” Steve yelled, and it wasn’t long after that Bucky heard his boots on the stairs.

“Can’t,” Bucky explained. It was self-evident when Steve got there. Tony was trapped in debris, unconscious and the room was slowly filling with water. Like some bad Star Trek episode or something. Bucky could get Tony out, but he’d go under if Bucky let go.

Steve splashed into the Command & Control center.

“Well, this doesn’t look good,” another voice added, coming up behind Steve.

Hawkeye. Not a fan. He was looking down the shaft of an arrow, not quite sure who he was supposed to shoot, apparently.

“Get th’ damn support beam off ‘im and we can get out of here,” Bucky suggested, confused as to why they weren’t actually _moving_ yet.

He’d been holding Tony up for hours, it seemed. His back ached, his chest hurt, there were pieces of debris stuck in his skin. The first gush of water had filled the room to almost thigh deep in moments, then someone else -- somewhere, Bucky didn’t know where, or who, or why -- had managed to cut it down to a slow, but steady rise. Whoever that person was, Bucky was gonna pin a medal on them, even if they were fucking Hydra, because he and Tony would have died, if the water hadn’t slowed.

Steve tried.

His muscles bunched and his shoulders strained enough so that the fabric of his armor was stretched. Bucky tugged, light, but Tony wouldn’t budge.

“Leave him,” Hawkeye suggested, cynical. He still hadn’t come all the way into the room, watching the mayhem from a secure lookout position.

“Fuck you, pal,” Bucky snarled. He wasn’t going anywhere. If he drowned with Tony, so be it.

“I can’t lift it, Buck,” Steve said, and Bucky squinted at him, not sure if Steve was sincerely trying or not. Couldn’t prove it. But none of them had much lingering fondness for Tony. Steve had only come for Bucky -- he’d managed to get his SOS and location out when they’d plugged him in to torture him; the extra electricity had given his internal circuits some extra boost. Enough that Natasha would have been able to find him, and Steve would come for him.

Bucky knew that like he knew his own name.

Admittedly, there were days that Bucky _didn’t_ know his own name. So there was that.

“You bring the witch with you?”

Of course they had; just the way Hawkeye’s gaze flickered upward was enough to tell him the truth.

“Get her down here and get us out of here.”

“He’s pretty badly hurt,” Steve reasoned. “You think--”

Bucky drew a knife from the small arsenal he’d taken off the guards. “He’ll live. _He has to_. You get us out of here.” His fingers tightened against Tony’s

“Wanda’s evacuating the other prisoners,” Steve said. “Clint, hold up Stark, Bucky can help me lift.”

Bucky thought he might throw up, trusting Hawkeye to keep Tony’s head above water while they worked on the support beam, but what else was he going to do? Aside from flay Hawkeye alive if he let Tony drown.

Bucky got himself under the beam and heaved. Okay, provisionally, Steve was forgiven for being an asshole, because Bucky was pretty sure he couldn’t have lifted the goddamn thing on his own. His bones ached from the strain of the weight against him.

In the end, they barely managed to shift it enough for Hawkeye to pull Tony free. A blossom of red bloomed against the water as soon as they moved; something had been keeping Tony from bleeding. As soon as Steve was clear, Bucky dropped his half of the beam and raced to Tony’s side. “Shit, shit, shit.”

And the water was rising faster, now. “Come on, Buck,” Steve said, grabbing his arm and pulling him. “We need to go now.”

“He’ll bleed out if we don’t get this stopped now.”

“Buck, I’m not leaving without you.”

“Well, I ain’t leavin’ without him, so get the hell off me, pal,” Bucky snapped.

Bucky located the source of the blood and started basic first aid. The lack of supplies was maddening.

“Jesus,” Steve complained, but at least he helped get Tony out the water so Bucky could get a tourniquet on. “What happened here? Why’s he so important to you?”

Bucky looked up at Steve; if his heart wasn’t in his eyes, he suspected that was because it was busy panicking. But he didn’t have time to sort through his tangle of feelings. It wasn’t just what Tony could do for him, free him from the mess inside his head. There was more to it, but Bucky needed some time to figure it out. “He’s just important.”

***

“Hey, hey, doll, shhh,” a voice said. It wasn’t quite a familiar voice, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar voice either, and it calmed Tony just enough that he stopped struggling against whatever was holding down.

The nasal cannula was hanging down his cheek, looped over one ear, but in his frantic attempts to sit up, he’d knocked it aside.

Another set of tubes went into his arm. There was probably a set of tubes that were coming out of his ass, too. Tony’d been in the hospital a few times for long-term injuries. Those visits fucking sucked.

“Get me out of this bed,” Tony said, or he tried to say. His voice was just about gone, hoarse and scratchy like he’d been screaming, and his throat hurt like someone had shoved a tennis racquet down his throat. Sideways.

Barnes-- no, Bucky, they’d decided that, just before the big crazy, hadn’t they… yeah. Bucky didn’t bother to try to talk him out of it, or object, or anything. He just started unwinding the tubes, peeling off the tape. He tugged the IV line out with an expert hand and produced a bandage pad and a roll of pink medical tape to stop the bleeding.

“You want me to decath you, or wait for a nurse?”

Yeah, great. Tube up his dick. That was just charming.

Tony blinked. “You know how to do that?” Safely was unspoken, but decidedly implied because really, no, he didn’t want anyone to just rip a Foley tube out of _there_ , not even him.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He held up a syringe -- no needle, thank Christ -- and a pair of thin, blue gloves. “I can do it.”

What the hell? Bucky had already seen everything Tony had to offer, and they’d been through hell together. A little further wouldn’t cross anyone’s eyes. He nodded, then didn’t watch while Bucky did a number of uncomfortable things in the general vicinity of his dick. He didn’t even want to know what Bucky did with what was probably a bag full of pee. Just, yeah. See no evil.

“I brought your clothes, too,” Bucky said. There was a brush of cool, wet cloth along his thighs and then, “and coffee, in a thermos. Wasn’t sure when you’d wake up.”

“What clothes?”

“Jeans, sneakers with lifts -- you wear lifts, Tony -- and a Metallica tee.”

“You’d wear lifts too if half your friends were a good four or five inches taller than you are,” Tony muttered. No point denying it. Anyone who’d ever paid attention to his footwear knew he was a little sensitive about his height. “Also, did you say something about coffee?”

“Here you go.” Bucky washed his hands, then poured him a cap full from the thermos, still steaming, black as night and bitter as regret. Perfect.

“You’re my new favorite,” Tony declared. The hot liquid woke him up a little, soothed his aching throat. “What happened, where are we, who’s with you, and are we in any danger?”

“Slow down,” Bucky said, steadying the cup before Tony dropped it, which would have been both uncomfortable and a waste of perfectly good coffee. “In answer to your questions, we’re in Budalange, in the hospital.”

“Luxembourg? Why?”

“They’re not signees of the Accords, and it was the safest -- and closest -- neutral zone we could maintain on the fuel that was left in the quinjet.”

Tony nodded, make a continue gesture while he caffeinated himself. After weeks of being without, the buzz was hitting him right away.

“The Raft sank. We have no way to estimate lives lost, since the facility had no official records, but over four dozen powered persons were rescued who’d been held prisoner there, not including you and I. Steve, Romanov, Barton, and Wanda came to the rescue. Your friend, James Rhodes, brought me your clothes via overnight Warmachine delivery, and after he comes back from a forty-eight hour stint of bedside vigil with no sleep, he’ll be damned happy to see you. And… we’re in as much danger as is the status quo for superheroes.”

“Situation normal. All fucked up,” Tony said. Rhodey was here? There was a warm fuzzy feeling at that, which neatly counteracted the chill around his heart at the thought of Rogers or Maximoff. Or Barton for that matter. He wondered if Rhodey had used his bionic legs to kick Barton’s ass yet. He hoped not.

He’d rather be a witness.

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” Bucky said.

Tony cocked his head. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

“True,” Bucky said. He shook out Tony’s jeans. “Lean on me, if you need. I’ll help you get dressed.”

He was wobbly, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Bucky was calmly stoic about the whole thing, enough so that Tony only felt mild embarrassment about using him as a human crutch while getting into pants and his tee.

“So, is this some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing? We bonded over being imprisoned and tortured together? And you know, while there’s an unlocked door nearby, you want to tell me what was up with that…” Tony waved his hand around, as if there was a word for the not-quite-sex that had happened between them.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “And probably? And… that was a calculated risk.”

Tony’s eyebrow reached the stratosphere. “So, you’re bad at math.”

Bucky chuckled. “Maybe so, doll,” he said. “But there was an extreme protocol set up. Hydra… made it impossible for me to turn on certain higher ups, even if I was ordered to by someone who had my command words. I can’t… I can’t hurt anyone I’ve been… _intimate_ seems the wrong word.”

Tony considered vomiting, but he didn’t think there was anything in his stomach to come up and his throat already hurt. “Who--” He bit that off. Tony really didn’t want to know.

“I think most of them are dead,” Bucky said, not meeting Tony’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure it would work. But that shit is still in my head and I didn’t want to hurt you. Kinda counterproductive to the whole idea of rescuing you.”

Tony gave a bitter barking sound. It wasn’t a laugh, no, not even close. “Hydra is so fucked up.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Bucky said, and that was true. Didn’t want to know.

“So, what now?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know. I ain’t never been the brains of the operation before. Which Steve’ll tell you. Battle plans, yes. What happens now? I got no clue, doll.” He reached out, touched Tony’s face with two metal fingers. The metal was warm, which seemed like it should be strange, except how it wasn’t. Electronics got hot when they were working, fact of life. That’s why the arm had vent-ports in it, after all.

Tony took hold of Bucky’s metal wrist, held those fingers in place. He didn’t know what came next. He’d figure it out as they went. But he did know one thing. He didn’t want Bucky to leave. And he didn’t know how to ask him to stay.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why come for me at all? How’d you even know where I was? Why… why… lots of why?”

“There were a lot of reasons, in the beginning. Before I ever got thrown in that damn hole and saw you there, strong as hell, defiant as a windstorm. Then the old reasons stopped mattering.”

“So what’s the new reason?”

Bucky took a step, the most hesitant, tentative step Tony had ever seen, tilted his head, inhaled--

Tony met him halfway, already sensing in his bones what was about to happen and wanting it more than anything.

Tony’s hand came up and found its way into that tangle of rich, dark hair, pulled Bucky’s head down. Bucky opened his mouth, caught Tony’s bottom lip in his teeth and tugged, then licked at it until Tony thought he might actively die from the sensation. Bucky whimpered, pulled them closer.

Tony rewarded that beautiful little sound by opening to the kiss, shifting against Bucky to test his mouth, taste him.

When Bucky pulled back, his eyes were wide, dark. “I don’t… I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I ain’t… felt anything like it before.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?”


End file.
